Free Republic

On hearing Friday’s news that Mary Burke’s job-creation plan was plagiarized from other Democrats running for governor, in Delaware, Tennessee, and elsewhere we thought, well…there are think tanks whose business is to share such ideas. But Burke reacted less calmly, firing the consultant responsible for the cut-and-paste job. Why? For duping her into thinking she had a jobs plan? More intriguing than Burke snatching ideas that may be interchangeable among Democrats is her apparently scant familiarity with what she is proposing. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel quoted her saying “This is my plan on how to drive Wisconsin’s economy forward,” later adding...

MADISON, Wis. -- Democratic candidate for Wisconsin governor Mary Burke said Friday she cut ties with a consultant she blames for copying several sections of her jobs plan from platforms of other Democrats. Burke has built her campaign around the jobs issue. One of her key arguments is Republican Gov. Scott Walker doesn't deserve re-election because he hasn't lived up to his promise to create 250,000 private-sector jobs, and Wisconsin is lagging other states in adding workers. Burke told the Associated Press it was her decision to end the campaign's relationship with consultant Eric Schnurer of the Pennsylvania-based consulting firm...

German companies are ranked second in the world for industrial plagiarism, a global study released on Friday found. Just under a quarter of all plagiarized technical products examined were sold by a German company, the study by the Federation of German Machine and Equipment Builders (VDMA) has found. Germany was behind China, but ahead of Turkey and India in terms of the number of copies sold. Most German firms involved in plagiarism targeted competitors in the high-tech sector, in contrast to Chinese manufacturers, which usually copied low-quality goods. …

HELENA — Sen. John Walsh said Thursday he is pulling out of the Senate race because his campaign was distracted by the controversy over allegations that he plagiarized a U.S. Army War College research paper. Walsh, a Democrat, said he decided to drop out of the race. He had canceled campaign events this week as he and his family discussed what he would do. The New York Times reported July 23 that Walsh had plagiarized large portions of the research paper in 2007. Walsh will serve out the rest of his Senate term, which ends in early January 2015. “I...

Far left writer and former reporter for the New York Times, Chris Hedges, has been exposed as a serial plagiarist. So what scurrilous "rightwing" source made these charges? None. The exposure of the socialist Chris Hedges appeared in the liberal New Republic. And it was not just a minor slip on the part of Hedges. According to the article Hedges blatantly plagiarized over and over again in great quantity over a number of years. In fact the depth of his plagiarism would make even Joe Biden blush. So was Hedges apologetic when confronted with his many examples of plagiarism? Not...

Led Zeppelin are being accused plagiarising the introduction of their iconic 1971 anthem, “Stairway To Heaven”, in a new lawsuit brought by the estate of Spirit guitarist Randy California and members of the band. Business Week reports the estate – and group’s members – believe the acoustic introduction to “Stairway” was lifted from their 1968 instrumental, “Taurus.”

North Korea appears to ape Nasa with space agency logo Design looks remarkably similar to that of US space agency, right down to the blue globe, lettering and swooshed ring The choice of a globe as the emblem for North Korea's space agency expresses the country's ideal of peaceful exploration, explains the Korean Central News Agency. The blue rings, it adds, represent satellites, and the constellation of stars shows the desire to "glorify Kim Il-sung's and Kim Jong-il's Korea as a space power". However, the state news agency neglects to mention one glaring thing: the new logo looks a lot...

Following President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, former George W. Bush speechwriter Mark Thiessen told Fox News Channel’s “The Kelly File” host Megyn Kelly that Obama’s speech plagiarized lines from Bush’s 2007 speech, for which he said he was the lead speechwriter. “It was eerily familiar,” Thiessen said. “There were lines like, ‘Our job is to help Americans build a future of hope and opportunity. A future of hope and opportunity begins with a growing economy. A future of hope and opportunity requires our citizens have affordable and available health care.’ ‘Extending opportunity and hope depends...

As dark clouds continue to gather over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, all but the most diehard Obama worshipers grudgingly concede that his presidency has entered its lame duck phase. Some analysts have drawn comparisons between the second term of the current occupant of the White House and that of his immediate predecessor. Bruce Drake, writing at Pew Research Center’s Fact Tank, notes: Barack Obama and George Bush have at least one thing in common when it comes to the second terms they won — the first year of their encores have been downers when it came to their public images. Both...

Sen. Rand Paul was supposed to be a more politically savvy version of his father, former Texas congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul. The senior Paul energized a subset of the Republican Party, but the younger Paul was supposed to be a more mainstream advocate for limited government and a non-interventionist foreign policy. The Kentucky senator has even been touted as one of the leading candidates for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Yet time and again, he has shown why he shouldn't be taken seriously. The latest controversy surrounding Paul, which has been detailed in a series of stories at...

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow created headlines this week when she alleged that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) had plagiarized a recent speech from Wikipedia, but it turns out the liberal cable news host has been accused of plagiarism herself. In 2010 on his blog “Open Salon,” Michael Rodgers of North Port, Fla., wrote a blog post titled “Rachel Maddow Plagiarized My Blog!” “Don’t get me wrong, I love Rachel Maddow,” Rodgers wrote. “Truth be told, I’m a huge fan. So, if she wanted something from my blog, all she had to do was ask. I would have given willingly because that’s...

President Obama's second autobiography, The Audacity of Hope, attempts to channel the spirit of great American statesmen. But it is one thing to channel the spirit of great men, and quite another to steal words without assigning credit, especially within the confines of a bestselling book. While we should praise the former, we should rightly criticize the latter as a form of intellectual plagiarism. Now, Obama has faced these criticisms before. In early 2008, for example, Hillary Clinton's campaign accused him of plagiarizing a speech by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. In that instance, Washington Times reported the flowing similarities:...

Islam is a supremacist doctrine that affirms not only Muslim superiority over non-Muslims, but also Arab superiority over other ethnic groups and races. Both Islam's holy texts - the Quran and the Hadith, namely Muhammad's official biography - and scholars are testament to that. Muhammad himself bought, sold and kept African slaves. Historically, Muslims' slave trade of black Africans has been by far the world's greatest numerically and the most long-lasting, spanning over 1400 years (watch the video "The Arab Muslim Slave Trade Of Africans, The Untold Story", by clicking on the link just below this post title). Arab Muslims...

Jane Goodall Book Held Back After Accusations of Plagiarism Alison Flood 25 March 2013 Leading primatologist Jane Goodall's forthcoming book has been postponed after she was found to have lifted some passages from websites including Wikipedia. An expert asked by the Washington Post to review Goodall's Seeds of Hope, which was due out next month, spotted that some passages in the book echoed various other sources. The paper published a report last week which claimed that at least 12 sections in the book were lifted from other websites, and which included an admission from Goodall of her failure correctly to...

Lefty Fox News analyst Juan Williams is in hot water after it was discovered that a column he’d written for a political insider publication contained plagiarized material. According to a report by Salon.com, a Feb. 18 piece that Williams wrote for The Hill newspaper copied almost word-for-word from a study by the far-left Center for American Progress on the subject of immigration and Social Security. Confronted by Salon, Williams blamed his research assistant, a “young man” who, according to Williams, had submitted the barely altered paragraphs to him for publication in the column: For the full details of the particular...

In a case of apparent plagiarism, Fox News pundit Juan Williams lifted — sometimes word for word — from a Center for American Progress report, without ever attributing the information, for a column he wrote last month for The Hill newspaper. Almost two weeks after publication, the column was quietly revised online, with many of the sections rewritten or put in quotation marks, and this time citing the CAP report. It also included an editor’s note that read: “This column was revised on March 2, 2013, to include previously-omitted attribution to the Center for American Progress.” But that editor’s note...

CNN must be so proud! On Sunday, the self-described most trusted name in news aired a thirteen minute interview with Global Warmingist-in-Chief Al Gore, and although the subject of the sale of Current TV was raised, host Fareed Zakaria didn't ask him one question about al Jazeera's connection to oil (video follows with transcript and commentary): What a Joke! Zakaria Doesn't Ask Gore About Al Jazeera's Connection To Oil! FAREED ZAKARIA: Current TV, a great business deal, but you started it because you wanted to create a greater, well, another liberal voice, a stronger one, an independent voice. Is this...

The board of education says it has looked into the concerns surrounding two cases of possible plagiarism by Superintendent of Schools Carolyn R. Koos, and is "satisfied that she understands her mistake and will not repeat it," board president Louis Casella said in a statement. "The board has fully expressed and discussed its concerns with the superintendent," Casella said. "Superintendent Koos has apologized for any adverse effect this may have had on the district." NJ.com first reported the possible plagiarism Jan. 10, when a letter sent to the district appeared to be a near word-for-word copy of a Nov. 27...

Teachers and scholars consider the unattributed use of someone else's words and ideas to be a very serious offense, but the public doesn't seem to mind much, at least when it comes to politics. The incidents of plagiarism and fabrication that forced Joe Biden to quit the 1988 presidential race have drawn little comment since his selection as Barack Obama's vice presidential running mate—just as revelations of plagiarism by Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin scarcely hurt their book sales. In 1987, before Biden quit the race, he called the incidents "a tempest in a teapot." Although most reporters disagreed...

The Environmental Protection Agency commemorated the start of Hispanic Heritage Month with a picture of Che Guevara and a bit of plagiarism. An internal email obtained by BuzzFeed and distributed to agency employees marking the start of the celebration of Hispanic culture this Saturday, featured the above image of a horse and buggy passing a billboard of the Marxist revolutionary, in addition to a listing of facts about Hispanic culture. “Hispanic people are vibrant, socializing and fun loving people,” one entry reads. “Among various facts associated to this culture is that they have a deep sense of involvement in their...